


The Journeyman Prince, and La Chanson de Sieur Tony

by Weaselwoman



Series: Sir Tony's Apprentice [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate History, Alternate History - No powers, Chess, Gen, Growing Up, Mangled Christianity, Middle Ages, Reed Richards mentioned in passing, Y1K, idiot boy with lute, mangled chess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-08-19 14:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 11,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8211767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaselwoman/pseuds/Weaselwoman
Summary: Former slave Loki Antonisson returns from college to find his mentor gone. The great blacksmith Tony Stark is nowhere to be found. Loki must find Tony, find himself, and find out a lot more on his journey of discovery.





	1. A short Introduction.

In _Sir Tony’s Apprentice_ , Medieval knight Sir Tony Stark acquired a boy slave during the Sack of Asgard, a kingdom in Far Eastern Europe. He named the slave Silver (but we also know him as Loki). After several adventures, he decided the apprenticeship was complete, and sent more-grown-up Loki off to college.

But Tony had his own secrets, and his own reasons for joining the free-lance band called the Avengers.

Scholar (and freed man) Loki returns to their home in Lorraine (well, middle Francia; a bit south of what would later be called Lorraine) after graduation to find his mentor gone, and Tony’s unknown vengeance--a task in which Tony promised that Loki would participate—perhaps undertaken without him. But he doesn’t know enough about Tony’s distant past to follow him. All that Tony specifically mentioned is that he has a wife.

Loki finds the remains of a jar of wine, and gets drunk.


	2. The Journeyman Prince.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki goes to town.

That night, Loki slept on his own pallet, with his fancy clothes as his pillow and his weather cape as a blanket. He woke before dawn with Sir Cat licking his nose; the cat had deigned to sleep with him, but any fool knew that dawn is the time to hunt! But fool Loki had a headache and collapsed back into bed, rising much later to pump some water, start a fire and make some tea. He boiled some of Lady’s oats as breakfast; Sir Cat reappeared with a fat mouse between his teeth.

“All yours,” Loki said; sipped his tea, and thought. He’d found no messages at the deserted house; no papers at all, and that was unlike Tony, who had no qualms about leaving behind the things he did not need. So perhaps others had been here in the past; or perhaps Tony had anticipated the house being raided. No Tony. No clues. Hmm. No clues _here_.

_Where else might a message be left?_

When he’d been manumitted, they had gone all the way to Lyons, and Tony had insisted the information be recorded there. But there was another little town, even closer, where Tony would go every week or so to pick up wine, some new foodstuffs, and information. Perhaps there was a message there, at Luzinay…time to go into town.

Loki went into the house, and made himself presentable in a less gaudy but still acceptable set of clothes. He started to gather his things, in case he did not come back; left the idiotic lute (he was not so good a musician, after all), noticed the cat had de-plumed his cap, and found the bedraggled pheasant feather half-buried under Sir Cat’s towel-bed. He re-saddled Lady, rode slowly away and then trotted into town.

 

Luzinay was a small place, just a crossroads on the way from the pass into Tuscany to the busy Rhone River. The first place he stopped, the clerk-recorder’s house, was deserted in mid-day; the inn nearby was busier, though. Loki bought bread and cheese and beer, and sat at the same table as a remembered clerk.

“Do I know you?” the man asked.

“I came before on business. I was Sir Tony’s slave, and he freed me.”

“That’s right.” Loki expected the well-to-do clerk to cringe away from an ex-slave; but instead he smiled. “You should have heard Sir Tony praise you, these last years. Silver, was it?”

“Silver,” the young man agreed, “or Loki. Antonisson.”

“Well, Antonisson, he left a message for you in the papers he gave me. I’ve read most of the others, quite enjoyable actually, but I’ve left that one alone.”

“I’m glad he left his papers in good hands, then. May I buy you another beer?”

“This. When you finish yours, come over and we’ll have a look.”

 

The barman gave Loki a familiar look when he asked for another beer. “Yer Sir Tony’s boy?”

“That’s right.”

“I saw you on the road yestereen. Thought you was a minstrel. Was hopin’ for some entertainment, but…”

“Not just now. I’m trying to find Sir Tony. When did you see him last?”

The barman frowned in thought. “Couple months ago? Here, take the beer. I’ll not take yer money for the food you had.”

“My thanks, then.”

 

Next door, in an upstairs room, the clerk opened a heavy wood chest and sorted through papers. He recovered a small piece of parchment, on the bottom, still sealed with ungnawed wax. “Here.”

Tony had sketched a crude map: south and west and the name Felix. And a note for Loki, in familiar handwriting: “ _I hope to get back before your return. If I don’t, once you know who you are, come find me_.”

 _Once you know who you are_? Had Tony meant only which name would he answer to, when names had been slippery throughout their travels together? Or something deeper? Damn, he needed more information. Was there another clue, somewhere here or back at the house?

The clerk shrugged his shoulders when asked if there was anything more; he let Loki look through the rest of the papers, seeking a note, anywhere, in Tony’s distinctive script; there were shipping lists in Loki’s own handwriting, with scribbled notes and sometimes a check-mark beside them (“I checked ‘em off,” the clerk said), but nothing from Tony.

The barman at the inn flagged him to a stop as Loki was starting back to Tony’s villa. “My boss wants to talk to ya. We’ll put you up for the night.”

“And my horse?”

“As well; come in. Stay to the back of the room; I’ll bring stew, and he’ll talk to yer later.” The barman’s accent was elusive, representative of everyplace and no-place, but certainly no court. Another mystery.

 

After seeing to Lady’s needs for the night, Loki sat inconspicuous in a corner, dipping bread in the (quite good) stew, watching the barman and his boss—a limping, well-fed man in a well-used apron—as they served and chattered with other patrons. At one pause in their action, the lame inn-keeper passed by Loki’s table, and dropped a complex metal ring on his table. “If you get bored waiting, have a look at this,” he said, then moved on.

It was actually a pair of rings intertwined; one of striped steel, one of brass or bronze: and Loki had seen such rings before. In fact, Tony had taught him how to make them. It was good to see something so familiar here. So here was a clue: Loki twisted the rings apart, and looked for any hallmarks or signatures. Nothing. He twisted the rings together idly, making one hang from the other, then locking the two back into their intertwined form.


	3. Pierre.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The innkeeper tells Loki about Tony and the Avengers.

Loki was sipping a cup of (very nice) wine, idly rolling the ring across the table and fetching it back again, when the last patron left the bar of the inn. Wasting no time, the innkeeper slid onto the bench opposite him.

“You’re Silver?”

“Loki Antonisson,” Loki assured him.

“I’m Pierre Bonassis. Don’t laugh—yer father Tony gave me that last name.”

“Good … donkey?” Loki guessed, trying to be respectful.

“Good seat.” Pierre slapped his lame hip. “Or used to be, until I rode a horse too far into his fall, and he rolled over on me. So I took up innkeeping.”

“And how did you—do you—know Tony?”

“Ah, there’s the tale I meant to tell. It starts before that, though. I’ll need more drink. Grimm!”

The barman looked up.

“I’ll need a tall ale, and more wine for the boy here.”

“Make it weak beer,” Loki suggested, “if there’s a long tale I’m to heed to.”

“You heard ‘em.”

 

Once their drinks arrived, Pierre started talking. “The story starts in Britain, in Mercia. Was a warlord name of Arnulf, who ran a motley band of hangers-on from all parts of the world. Among ‘em was a fellow from Dublin named Roger the Gael. When Arnulf breathed his last on a battlefield, and his son Bjorn Arnulfsson would have taken over—well, Bjorn weren’t the man his dad was. Roger left Arnulf’s band, and some of his buddies came with him.”

“Tony?”

“Nah, Tony wasn’t born yet. (Told ya this was a long story.) Roger chose a Mercian named Bran t’be his flag-bearer, his banner-man. To Bjorn’s dismay, the group’s smith chose to go with Roger too, as well as Margret the Driver, who managed his tool-wagon. Oh, and Roberto the cooper. Roger liked to help people hold onto what they had, instead of invading, so they called themselves the Defenders.”

“And how is this relevant?”

“Just be patient. Anyway, the smith was named Hovarth the Strong—perhaps you’ve heard of him? Hovarth came from Cornwall, said he was descended from Weyland Smith himself; and claimed his ma’s folks had been Phoenician, from a group who’d been chasing Cornwall tin for hundreds of years. That’s what he said, anyway.”

“Hovarth? Anthony Hovarthson?”

“Just so,” agreed Pierre.

“And was Margret Tony’s mother?”

“Nope. No relation.” A pause. “So they wandered around Britain for a while, Hovarth with his skills with exotic ores, Roger with his decisions, Bran with the flag, etc., until word came of a Saracen outrage in Jerusalem. So the Defenders crossed the Channel and came to Europe, aiming for the Holy Land. (Wasn’t a pope to encourage ‘em; this was Roger’s idea.)” Pierre took a deep draft of his ale. “They made it as far as Antioch. On the way, they picked up a few more of us; big-eyed young ones looking for something to do, or a chance. The ones who stayed were a Nubian named the Fury, a quiet fellow from Winchester named Coulson, and me. We fought our way back to East Francia and became mercenaries at large. Did well at it.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, Roberto had picked up a little cough, back East, and it wasn’t getting better in the cold and wet of the German marshes; so he wanted to go south and west, to dry air in the Moorish country. The Fury wouldn’t go back to people who had captured him, so it looked like the band was splitting up. Finally Roger decided: the jobs were in the marsh country, and that was that. But Roberto and Hovarth split off, and went south. Margret knew the smithing trade by then, so she stayed with the Defenders and started training good German apprentices to help.”

“You lost track of Hovarth?”

“We crossed paths a fair number of times later. He and Roberto settled in Iberia—northern Iberia, just past the Pyrenees, one of those little kingdoms. They found wives and founded families. I met him with the boy Tony in the Black Forest country once, looking at ores and a-smithing away there. But Hovarth had learned some way to concentrate his wine—called it _distilling_ —and was drinking his own product even as he travelled Europe, teaching the trick to his friends. Eventually I didn’t run across them any more.”

“About five years after that, Roger retired back to the Dublin area, Bran went back to Mercia, and the Fury took over the group. He didn’t talk about his own past, but it must have been pretty bad; he called us the “Avengers.” And we started looking for trouble, not just for folks we could help.  One day near the northern Rhine river, we ran across Tony’s trail again. He was on his own, talking exotic places and showing some exotic techniques”—Loki raised the rings in acknowledgment, and Pierre continued, “talked Margret out of the cart and took over as smith. I think Margret had a beau in mind; wouldn’t be surprised if it was Roger; they already had children together, and she took them and the ‘prentices and left Tony with the Avengers.”

“Tony had a mouth on him, and kept giving us names. Eventually we gave up on disciplining him; he was too good at his job. So Coulson was ‘Agent,’ and Fury was ‘Aquila,’ and I was ‘Bonassis,’ and…well, if he hadn’t been so good at talking contracts, I doubt we would have ever let him see a client. We picked up more folks, like Bruce the new Banner-man and a trick-arrow archer and… we were doing well when some idiots along the Saone decided _we_ were rich enough to be ambushed ourselves.”

Another deep draft of ale. Pierre continued, “I near lost my leg, but Tony came with me this far, and gave me his free coin, which, with mine, was enough to set up this pub and to buy an out-of-the-way villa, which he _sometimes_ would visit (until he came back with you). Few weeks ago he was getting ready to go south; said he wanted to check on some things before you got here. Last I saw of him.”

Loki sipped at his wine, thoughtfully. “Then I will need to go south, as well. I don’t have much in the way of supplies…”

“Is the villa intact?”

“Mostly emptied out. Both horses are gone.”

“Oh, Tony took Stewpot. I’ve got Kaboom in my meadow. Anything left you want to store here?”

“A lute.”

“Ben thought you was a musician!”

“Well, I’m not very good at it. And a cat; but Sir Cat owns himself.”

“Perhaps with the horse here, he’ll stay.”

“Perhaps. It’s his decision, though.” Loki finished his beer, and stood to take a candle upstairs, to bed.


	4. Tony’s childhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once upon a time...

It was another wonderful day. It had rained last night, and the morning light made second suns in the remaining puddles, turned the drips from the eaves into falling diamonds. The air smelled of pine and olive trees. Four-year-old Tony washed his hands in the bowl provided by his bed, tucked up his nightshirt and ran downstairs and outside.

“Tony!” his mother called as he ran by. She was sitting with her cousin (Tony’s Aunt Giulia), drinking tea and preparing the next weaving: Giulia spun wool while Maria wrapped the warp threads. Dyeing would happen in the next few days, and with warm odd-smelling vats of bright colors to be splashed in, staining his hands. But now, Tony’s Uncle Roberto was directing the weeding in the vineyards, and from the little shop-building on the other side of the red-tiled plaza came a welcoming clanging sound. Father was in his work-shop, and that meant Tony could help!

Hovarth was shaping a great bowl of copper with a small hammer when Tony came in. “Shoes!” came the reminder. Tony found his wooden clogs by the door and put them on; then ran to his own small bench with a scrap of copper and a hammer he could lift. He banged away for a while, then got bored with his project; put the hammer down and walked to his father’s much taller worktable. Father had quit his clanging also.

“Can I help? Need a nother tool?”

“I have to figure out the next step first,” said Hovarth, turning to him. He ruffled Tony’s hair. “I can’t hold the pot and read what to do next at the same time. Read this.” Handed the boy a parchment scroll, with a thumbprint in the margin.

Tony walked to the open door, where there was more light to read by. He started, “You will have to clean the metal before, uh, soldiering?, _soldiering_ the pieces together, so do not work the metal too close to the rim.”

“Not ‘soldiering,’ soldering,” Hovarth said. “Wait. You can read that?”

“Yes?”

“That’s in Anglish. You can read Anglish?”

“Yes?”

“Maria!” Hovarth shouted. “Maria! Come get your boy!”

 

A pause, and then Maria rushed in. “Hovarth? What is it? Is he hurt?” Rushing to Tony.

“Did you teach him to read?”

“Hovarth?”

“Read this.” He thrust he scroll at her, pointed to the thumbed area as she opened it. “There.”

“’Yo-ooh wii ha-veh to clay-an the’… These words are strange.”

Hovarth sighed. “It’s Anglish.” To the boy: “Tony, who taught you this?”

He scuffed a wooden toe on the ground. “You did?”

“When?”

“At nights? You read to me?”

Maria looked at her husband; Hovarth shrugged. “I ran out of other stories. He liked to listen to the old scrolls.”

“The metal stories,” Tony agreed.

“Yeah, kid; the metal stories.” Another fond ruffle of his hair. Maybe Tony wasn’t in trouble. “Maria, it’s time to find the boy a tutor.”

 

A brother from the local monastery was Tony’s first formal teacher, coming three times a week after siesta. First letters: Monumental capital letters, Irish uncials, demotic Greek; then languages: Latin, Greek, the local (Catalonian) Spanish. Hovarth provided manuscripts that the brother couldn’t read, samples of Viking runes, Arabic script, even hieratic Egyptian. There was a standing request for any foreign visitor at the monastery (the town had no inn) to stop by at Maria’s family _castillito_ to chat with Hovarth, his landholder wife, and their prodigy son. When Tony was six, a quiet request at the nearest Jewish quarter had delivered an older boy to teach him Hebrew for three months. Tony was given rare paper to supplement wax palimpsests as writing material; he drew machines and dragons on the edges of pages, relating most to the words that described them. Anything that made flames or noises: “Fire-child,” his parents sometimes teased.

Teasing came from another direction: his cousins, Felix and Ginevra, Uncle Roberto’s and Aunt Giulia’s children. Felix was a year older than Tony, heavy-set and as cheerful as his name; Ginevra was a year younger than Tony, with her mother’s red hair and a fiery determination to be taken seriously. They played together in the mornings, until the hour came for his cousins to start their chores and for Tony to learn or practice his letters. When he was seven, Tony was given permission to include them in his lessons one day a week; Tony re-learned his years-earlier lessons by passing them along to his cousins.

Over the years, the vineyard flourished, and Tony’s father became proficient at turning the less promising grapes into brandy. Felix learned farming and vineyard management; Ginevra learned accounts and estate management; Tony learned tinkering (which became systematic tinkering, then actual experimentation). Once Tony was nine, Hovarth let him come along on summer excursions to ore deposits in Saxony and Thuringia (and various places on the way).

Over the next years, Hovarth slowly grew angrier and more morose. By the time Tony was eleven, his “old man” was resembling that moniker: slow to rise in the mornings, muttering angrily as Tony in the shop clanged loudly on some unhammered metal. Tony thought his father was proud off him, letting him have so much responsibility, even while minutely criticizing the items he made. Later, in retrospect, he would realize that Hovarth’s complaints on his manufacturing prowess were also complaints that Tony could do what Hovarth himself could do no longer.

When Tony was twelve, the vineyards had become so prosperous that pilgrims and mendicants were hired to help during the harvest season.  One group of barefoot pilgrims, students from Latverie, arrived early the next summer, and the next two summers after that. Although others came and went, five were the core of the group: four young adults—two girls, Jess and Wanda, and two boys, Christof and Pietro—all barefoot and dressed in unadorned linen robes; and their leader, a tonsured young monk named Victor: a man with a quick smile, quick wit, and yet solemn and unarguable piety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A/N on soldering: The technique itself dates back to the Mesopotamians, says Wikipedia, but the word was not introduced into English until 1370 or so. Pardon the anachronism. Also, by “Anglish” I mean Old English, which actually looks more like the original text for Beowulf]


	5. Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bored Tony finds a new way to occupy his time.

Tony was a know-it-all kid when he was twelve. He’d been to northern Europe with his father, more than once; and now his studies and his craftsmanship were taking him places that Hovarth did not go. Never mind distillation: fire and its interaction with metal was the going thing. Rhineland craftsmen had taught him to make short-swords both flexible and sharp by folding over layers of carbon-rich and carbon-poor steel; but what happened if you used, say, Black Forest iron ore instead of Rhine valley ore? Or if you added Cornish tin, Spanish mercury (with care), or even copper? (Or silver? Or gold?)  Any strange-tinted ore he picked up on his travels was noted as to its location in a small journal, and then taken home to smelt and investigate. He made a constantly growing set of small knifes out of many exotic mixtures.

And sometimes you needed strength, not flexibility; he made rods and plates of wrought iron and bronze, noting again the conditions under which each was worked. He made them into little wagons and sent them to battle each other; when he had free time, Felix was happy to help the wagons fight.

But eventually he’d perfected the manufacture of, say, a small blade, or a corkscrew, or a tiny war-wagon; then he was at loose ends again. He’d read all the manuscripts they had; Maria would not let Hovarth initiate him into brandy tasting; and Hovarth increasingly occupied himself with the latter task. These days, “Maria! Come get your son!” meant she was to get him out of his father’s sight and hearing.

….

Tony was bored. Felix and Ginevra were supposed to be free to play with him this afternoon, but they were nowhere to be found (and certainly nowhere near his workroom). He could hear Hovarth growling over an off-flavor in his latest test-batch of brandy, but no higher-pitched calling voices. Where were they?

He walked across the plaza, stepped up onto a bench at the far side, and looked out across the vineyards. The hired workers were taking a siesta under one of the far olive trees: was there a pair of shorter people with them? Tony curled his fingers into a cone-shape, yelled, “Hey!”

Faces looking towards him; red-haired Ginevra waved.

Tony jumped down, ran through the vineyards, jinked around row-ends and reached the shade of the olive. Panted a little.

“Hey,” he said at a more civil decibel level. “I thought you were coming up. Who’re your friends?”

“Tony, you may have been all over Europe, but _we_ haven’t,” Ginevra told him. “Victor and his friends were telling us about Latveria.”

“Latverie,” a tall young man with a fringe of thick mouse-colored hair corrected her.

Tony reached over to shake his hand. “I’m Tony Hovarthsson. My mother owns this estate.”

“I’m Victor Fate,” the tall man said; and turned to Felix and Ginevra: “I thought this was your family’s property.”

“Oh, they all share,” Tony said, bringing the focus back to himself. “My mother, my father, Uncle Roberto, Aunt Giulia. Uncle runs the vineyard.”

“Sharing?” said Victor, smiling. “How positively Christ-like.”

Tony sat down next to Ginevra. “So tell us about Latverie. I’ve never been there.”

Victor laughed. “It’s a land of milk and honey, of course. Every year the wise king sends his smartest young subjects abroad, to learn at the finest schools in”—he sniffed—“the _rest_ of Europe. This year we decided to learn about agricultural practices”—Wanda, a thin red-haired girl in her late teens nodded—“and so instead of returning over the summer, we decided we would stay for the harvest here. We’ll go home afterwards.”

“Where is home?” Tony asked.

“Where have you been?”

“Mostly Francia, but father says he’ll take me to Mercia and the Danelaw.”

“How far east?” Victor continued.

“Oh, yeah, that was outside Francia…we’ve been to Bohemia a couple of times.”

Victor sniffed. “Latverie is somewhat farther south and east than that. Have you heard of Pannonia?”

“Isn’t that Avar country?”

“Near that. We are a small kingdom, and hard to find unless you know where it is. Queen Fortuna rules now.”

Ginevra objected. “You said a ‘wise king’ rules there.”

“Well, a wise king chose us to wander; he was the previous ruler, not the current monarch.” Changing the subject: “How are you ruled? And educated?”

 

_Sunday_ : The workers have the day off, and most go to the local cathedral for the daily service. The group from the olive tree (from Latverie) are notable absent. Tony returns from church with his family, changes out of his almost-best clothes ad into something he can play in, then runs out and through the orchard. The Latveriens are under their usual tree.

“You didn’t go to church?” It is a cause for amazement, not yet a delicate subject.

“We worshipped earlier,” Victor says easily. “At dawn, before you were up.”

But Tony knows the bishop is also a late-riser. “The church would have been closed then.”

“Oh, Hovarthsson, do you think we need a building in which to pray?  Did not Jesus preach in the fields, like the Sermon on the Mount? We talk to Him as He talked to us.”

(Weeks later, when Maria also noticed that not all the hired servants came to services, Tony told her: “They pray outside.”

“Ah, well, they are not from here. I suppose their customs are different.” She paused. “Are they Jewish? Or Muslim? They are not Moorish.”

“They still talk to Jesus,” Tony assured her. “So their souls should be safe.”)

 

When the harvest was done, Victor’s group took their pay, and left before the snows closed the northern passes.


	6. Parable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor tells a story.

From his perch in the olive tree, thirteen-year-old Tony could see Victor’s shrinking bald spot. Victor and his followers had arrived a little earlier this year: Jess and Wanda, Christof and Pietro, and a new girl, Susannah, blonde as the sun. They were helping out at small chores before the harvest arrived: reweaving baskets, sharpening knives (under Tony’s supervision), burning sulfur in the oak barrels, then rinsing them with sliced-open lemons and leaving them to dry in the sun. Tony and Victor had greased all the axles on the farm carts. Now they were waiting for Felix (backed up by Uncle Roberto) to declare that the grapes were ripe.

In the meantime, Victor lectured. He was a few years past taking his religious orders, and he would have to preach someday, so why not now? But he was irreverent enough to preach on whatever topic he liked, not just the scriptures and their interpretations.

“Consider the birds of the air!”

Tony whistled like a bird.

“Wrens nest with wrens, larks nest with larks; but there is a crafty bird in the meadow who lays her eggs in other birds’ nests!

“And what do the other birds do?”

No one replied.

Victor sneered. “Who has seen a baby bird?”

Ginevra and Felix waved, so did Jess.

“Which does it look like? Its bright-feathered father, or its more modest mother?”

“Like neither of them,” Ginevra said. “It has no feathers at all. It looks like a stunted lizard.”

“Just so,” said Victor. “Here are the hard-working parents, keeping their eggs warm and listening to their small noises, and then they hatch into ugly reptiles.”

“Ugly? Are you saying that babies are ugly?” That was dark-haired Jess.

“No, they just smell.” Victor wrinkled his nose. “But back to birds. Would not you be happy parents, if one of your sickly, wobble-headed lizard children was stronger than the rest? Bigger, sooner to fledge, sooner to fly?  And would you not give this likely heir more of the food you had gathered?”

“Yes…” That was white-blonde Pietro, looking down, scratching on the ground with a stick.

“And _that_ is how the cuckoo fools them!” A big breath. “She lays her larger egg, one per stolen nest, then lets the poor wren parents raise her monster child. The baby cuckoo is already wicked; he steals his nest-mates’ food, and even pushes them out of the nest!” A bigger breath. “Now, then.  Is the Lord evil?”

Tony sat still in the notch of the tree, and said nothing; the rest of the group, below him, said “No” in a ragged chorus.

“Was Jesus wicked?”

A louder, less ragged “No.”

“Just so.” Victor smiled. “So why would the Lord place Jesus, like the egg of a cuckoo, in the nest of Mary’s womb? Think about it.” He stood and stretched his legs. “Thus endeth the lesson.” And started to walk away, stretching his arms.

Susannah leaped to her feet, chased after him in the spattered shade.

Victor stopped. “Yes?”

“But Jesus is the Son of God!”

“Are we not all God’s children?”

“He is our Lord and Savior!”

Victor patted her arm, but spoke loudly enough that they all could hear. “Yes. Yes, He is; of course. But that came later.” He turned and walked away into the sunny field; Susannah let him go.

 

It was enough of a mind-puzzle that Tony wanted to understand these strange people better. Victor, their leader, would probably welcome him with more sermons; so, start with the others. But the harvest started the next day, and they all were too busy to answer any questions.

Tony, still under-occupied, agreed to carry water to the workers in the vineyard. Most of them were his neighbors, or the little castle’s usual servants; they thanked him with a nod. The outside laborers were stationed in order of how long they had worked for Roberto, with the longest-termed taking the nearby grapes, and the newest harvesters in the far end of the vineyard, being taught by Roberto and Felix to de-fruit the youngest vines. (These grapes were often of lesser quality, and went into Hovarth’s brandy instead.) Since Victor’s group had been here last year, they were almost all the way out, working in the hot sunlight far from the nearest well.

Thus, Tony was quite welcome there, too. Jess smiled at him; Wanda and Pietro, always near her, gave him grateful looks; Christof worked alone, fastidious; while Victor coached Susannah, always talking, and did not break off his lecturing at Tony’s arrival. A week of this, and more fields ready to harvest, and Tony finally felt comfortable enough to talk to Jess.

“Victor said you are students? Which school?”

“Well, Victor studied at Paris; so did Susannah; but the rest of us are learning from him.”

“Oh. Are you all from Latverie?”

“Victor and Christof are from Doomstadt, the capital; Wanda, Pietro and I are from the summer capital, in the hills. Zoundsblut, the Wondrous Triangle. We were his first followers.”

“How did you meet?”

Jess shrugged. “We have always known Victor, or known of him. Latverie is not very large. Pietro and Wanda are my younger cousins; they became my wards when their mother perished in a fire. They are twins, that is why they are so close to each other.”

“And Christof?”

“Victor’s younger brother. He came with us to avoid being sent to boarding school.”

“So, five from Latverie; and Susannah?”

She sniffed. “There were more of us, from all over Provence as well; but they chose not to come so far south.”

“Perhaps you will tell them, next year, we are not so unfriendly here.”

Jess smiled at him again, and he noticed the freckles that bridged her nose. “Perhaps.”


	7. Adoption(ism)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kid Tony: A new tutor; a new parable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING for a character's potentially offensive religious views

By the time Victor’s group returned next year, there had been some changes in Tony’s village. His old tutor, Brother Gervais, had passed away in the fall, and been replaced in earliest spring by the lay brother Obadiah, who was of an administrative bent; Ginevra and Tony took lessons from him, telling Felix what they had learned while he was apprenticing with his father Roberto at the vineyard and winery.

Obadiah was tall, solemn, and bald-headed (much more than tonsured), with a patronizing lecture style—“of course you already know this”—but occasional flashes of wit. Ginevra soaked in his lessons on accounting styles; Tony _used_ what he learned—how do you price your goods? your services?—and continued to draw dragons and engines on his palimpsest, dreaming of experiments while he listened.

In early summer, Hovarth grew sick, with a cough and a perpetual headache. One day he could no longer go to his laboratory. After a week of being bed-ridden, he summoned a confessor, and Obadiah came to his side.

As a confessor, Obadiah was much more sympathetic than he was as a teacher. (Lessons were suspended for a while.) He encouraged Hovarth with soup and fresh air, and denied him brandy, concerned for his physical as well as spiritual health. And he listened to Hovarth’s stories, his long-winded confession of sins real and imagined.

 

Obadiah was still by the recovering Hovarth’s side when early fall arrived, bringing the grape harvest and Victor’s band of workers. Their group was slightly larger than last year—dark-haired Jess brought a baby with light chestnut eyes. Susannah now shadowed Victor, like the twins shadowed Jess, and Christof stood aloof from them all, while heeding Victor’s—and only Victor’s—requests.

Felix was busy assessing the vineyard: which fields were ready? Which left Ginevra and Tony, freed from lessons, to visit the group under their olive tree, meet the new baby, and hear of their travels in the last year.

“You have a baby!” Ginevra said. “What’s his name? Oh, _her_ name? Can I hold her?”

Jess relented, holding out the swaddled bundle, with its bright-eyed head exposed. “This is Nike. See? Her hair is starting to come in.”

“Is she yours? Of course she is, I see the resemblance. Or another cousin?”

“No,” Jess smiled. “She’s mine.”

Ginevra looked around them. “You couldn’t bring her father with you?”

Tony watched Jess blink. She said, careful and a bit bitter, “He could not leave his routine.”

“Well, we’re happy to help,” Ginevra said. “Let me know if I can play nanny. Maybe, Tony, you as well?”

Tony blinked himself, horrified. “In a forge? Bad idea.”

Ginevra turned her back to Tony, and still holding the baby, asked Jess, “Tell me what Nike likes. I want to get to know her.”

 

No harvesting yet; the group comfortable eating cheese and bread under their olive tree. Jess fed the baby, then Ginevra played with her toes as Nike bubbled up undigested milk. Victor cleared his throat.

“You asked for a story? Susannah reminded me that we never finished last year’s parable. If Jesus was born a man—as we all are—how did He become God, along with our Heavenly Father? I won’t ask you to guess. The answer is that God the Father chose Him—alone of all His children.

“Why Jesus? As an infant, the Magi recognized He would be King. His family fled Herod’s wrath, and He grew up in Egypt. Consider Egypt: Alexandria, the wisest city, and Jesus learned in the temple there, and in the library, and from the wandering scholars. He learned so well that His teachers were amazed, all of them. And then—this young scholar, this would-be king—turned His back on all His glories, and returned with His earthly family to Bethlehem, to learn to become a _carpenter_ , a mere workman.

“Jesus humbled Himself. Why?

“He spent years like that, more than half of His life so far, building wooden structures, maybe toys,”—and Victor looked fondly at Nike—“maybe instruments for torture or even crucifixion for His Roman masters. When He was thirty, Mary His mother asked Him to intervene in a wedding that had run out of wine. Do you remember how He replied?

“Jesus said, ‘My Heavenly Father has not yet said I am ready.’

“Mary said, ‘Your earthly mother is telling you to get off your butt and do something.’”

Nervous laughter. Tony said, “I don’t remember the Bible saying that.”

Victor responded, “Think of your own mother and tell me she would not have said that, to a Son who had _wasted_ His gifts for almost twenty years.” And continued.

“So Jesus used some of the tricks He had learned in Alexandria—which was home also to the greatest magicians—and asked for water from the well and some berries; pulled out a packet of some special powder—and produced His first miracle.”

“It was a trick?” That was Ginevra.

“It was a miracle,” Victor responded. “Surely everyone said so.”

“Were all His miracles tricks, then?” Tony asked. “How did He feed the multitudes?”

“The same way we all do,” Victor said. “We share. You may have only five loaves and two fishes, but Ginevra has some cheese, Wanda has some olives, Jess has milk,”—Jess blushed—“Christof has a sling and can bring down a rabbit, and so on. It is a feast, if everyone shares.”

“And raising the dead?”

“Come, Tony, do you really think that a peasant family—two crying _women_ —know more about death than someone taught by Alexandria’s best physicians? Lazarus was in a deep sleep, nothing more.”

“Then why is Jesus the Son of God, and also God?”

“Because there was more to Him than miracles. There were the stories He preached. There was _love_. He told the uncomfortable Jews, writhing under a foreign, Roman yoke, that the answer was to love one another. To love God. To take care of each other, the sick, the poor, the crippled, the criminals. To love even the foreigners among them, the Samaritans and the like. That love was more important than law, than even the Sabbath, even the promises made to the Lord Almighty…Don’t abase yourself to God. Love Him. Don’t disdain your neighbor. Love her.

“For His love, for His sacrifice for love, when Jesus died, God took Him to Himself.

“And let Him return to men, to tell His story of love; _and that it works_.

“Jesus came back to the Apostles, to doubting Thomas, not a man, but a God in man’s shape; in a body now rent with deadly wounds, yet alive and cleaned of shed blood. He is God’s beloved Son, and God as well, because God recognized His love, and chose Him.”

Tony said, “God adopted Him.”

Victor replied, “You understand. Jesus turned His back on riches, used His wisdom to persuade, and taught us all to love. God, too, fell in love, and took Jesus as His Own Son.”


	8. Bodies and Souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wine and religion

The harvest was intense that year, and soon over. The wine from it would be praised for years to come. Victor and his company departed while the air was still warm, Jess calling out to Ginevra that they would see each other next year.

Over the winter, Hovarth’s health returned, and he took Tony with him to the high mountains to collect snow, to see whether ice could be used to improve his product. (It didn’t help.) Once away from the home castle, Hovarth explained to near-grown Tony how his future had been arranged in his parents’ wills: Tony would inherit the forge, metals, and other items of Hovarth’s wealth directly, but the castle and vineyards would stay in Maria’s family: Giulia to inherit from Maria if Tony was not available, and after her, Felix. In any case, Giulia’s family was guaranteed their current positions at the estate.

Maria, frightened by almost losing Hovarth, had become more religious, and spent more time with Obadiah as her confessor; he often joined the family at dinner, praising their wine, sharing brandy afterwards with Hovarth. Tony sometimes felt like he now had three parents.

 

The forge was mostly deserted these days. Tony was experimenting with physical alloying: take two strips of metal, the same or different in composition, and pound them together at the junction. Dozens of X’s, to be snapped apart on the morrow; but it was dinner time. Tony and three parents, asking about his day.

The next afternoon, all the alloy junctions having snapped apart (but a few of a metal with itself holding strong), and Tony walked back to his room, preparing to change clothes before dinner. Obadiah caught up with him in a corridor.

“Ah, Tony! I’ve been concerned about the state of your soul.”

“Oh?” Tony had done nothing wrong, that he knew of.

“It’s just that… Hovarth confides in me, and Maria is of saintly virtue; but I have neglected you. Have you sinned? In commission? Or in omission? The thoughts of youth are roiled, and the Devil can sit amidst the details.”

“I’ve done nothing wrong, to my knowledge; and neglected no prayers, no practices...why do you ask?”

“So the forge does not partake in hellfire? No passing fancy stirs your loins?”

“No, and no,” Tony said.

“I’ve not heard your catechisms lately. One can slide into error.”

“Error as in mistake?”

“Error as in sin.”

“Give me an example.”

“If you’ve read, say, something not in the Bible, such as Jesus being lesser than the Almighty God, and only His creation… well, that’s an error. That’s Arianism. Heresy.”

“I hadn’t heard of that.”

“Or that Jesus was a man, not God? That is a form of Adoptionism, also a heresy. There are many more. That the Holy Spirit has not human as well as divine nature. That Mary was not a virgin. That Jesus’ father was Joseph, or a Roman soldier.” He paused. “I know you have read many manuscripts. Do not confuse error with Truth.”

Obadiah walked away, no doubt with his own duties to address before dinner; Tony went to his room. He had an empirical soul. Error was an impure metal, not a conjectured thought; mistakes were tested by experimentation, not prayer. Manuscripts suggested many things; but reality confirmed their truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note:
> 
> Characters' interpretations of religious matters are their own and not meant to reflect those of the author. (Except maybe Tony's. Or maybe Loki's.)


	9. Alliance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tony gets married.

Tony’s fifteenth year would change worlds.

On his birthday, his mother told him he would marry Ginevra within the month.

“She’s my cousin.”

“Not a close one.”

“But the Church…”

“Dispensation has already been granted. Brother Obadiah will officiate. Banns will be posted this Sunday.”

“But I’d hoped…”

“Is she not suitable?”

“No! I mean, Yes! She’s very suitable. I even like her. But I’d hoped… I hoped to have more time before marriage. To see more of the world, with Father.”

Maria sighed. “Frankly, I doubt that Hovarth will travel ever again, at least in this world. It’s better if things are settled, first.”

Tony suspected Obadiah’s words behind her new-found practicality.

 

He ran to Roberto’s separate house, met his aunt Giulia there. “May I speak to Ginevra?”

“Not alone,” she told him.

 _Of course not_. Everything was different now.

“Then with Felix present?”

“Wait in the parlor.”

 

A quarter-hour later, when the siblings arrived, Tony blurted out, “You okay with this?”

Ginevra behind a veil—a veil!—said, “Yes, Antonio.”

“Antonio! It’s Tony. It’s still Tony.” He turned to her brother. “And you, Felix? You’re okay with this?”

“There is no better man for my sister.”

“We’re kids! We’re still kids!”

“Tony,” Ginevra said. “We are not children any more. Felix _runs_ this place. I account for every penny. You do not play, you build. Is there a better home for an engineer than _this_? A better family than us?”

He looked down, ran his hand through his unruly hair, sighed; looked back up, at his friends, _still_ his friends, as they had been and would be for his whole life; even if they would be relatives now. And Ginevra…he liked Ginevra, liked her quick mind and red-haired temper, the way she could outrun him, long legs flashing beneath her skirts; he suspected he would like trying out further mysteries with her, surrounded by closed bed curtains… “Can I kiss you, then?”

“I’m watching,” warned Felix, now in the role of protective big brother.

Ginevra flipped up her veil. “I’m willing to try,” she said, with a glower at Felix, then a soft, uncomfortable look at Tony.

“Me, too,” Tony said.

They put their arms around each other, moved their lips close, banged their noses together; then Ginevra tilted her head one way; Tony tilted his, first following her then the opposite way; and they kissed.

 

Just following the wedding, Tony was informed that the marriage would not be consummated until Ginevra was sixteen. “She is thin, too young to breed yet,” explained Aunt/mother-in-law Giulia. That’s right; marriage meant children, didn’t it?

The (golden, alloyed) good news: Tony could indeed share the State Bed with Ginevra tonight. The alloying (base metal) bad news: Aunt Giulia and Uncle Roberto had installed a tall board between Tony’s and Ginevra’s sides of the bed; and Giulia would be sleeping with the two, just outside of Ginevra. Some wedding night.

Tired out by dancing and his first brandy drunk, Tony stripped off his finery, washed himself all over, put on a thin night tunic, and climbed into his side of the giant bed. And promptly fell asleep.

In the dark pre-dawn, he awoke to the sharp buzz of Giulia’s snoring. Tony sat up with a sigh, trying to at least see over that tall board. Maybe that was Ginevra’s sleeping head; maybe she, too, was stirring, then sitting up. Tony held out his hand, and Ginevra clasped it in hers. Tony sat up very tall and reached over to kiss her hand. “Good night, love,” he said quietly; and heard her whispered reply of the same words. He smiled, and went back to sleep.

 

The next morning, Tony was up eventually, seeking his ablutions before his (invisible) bride would leave the bed; and then dressing and descending the stairs to find something to eat.

Brother Obadiah met him in the hall. “No stained sheets, to tell the tale?”

“No, thank you; we are both too young to consummate the marriage.” _Wake up, brain_. Tony felt it necessary to add, “Yet Ginevra is mine, in the eyes of God and men.”

“I see,” said the lay brother. “you know, some day you will have your household in a separate establishment. When that day comes, you will need your own confessor. Pray keep me in mind.”

“Oh, I will,” said Tony.


	10. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor arrives; Obadiah sniffs around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been more than a month, and this is a little chapter; oh, but the next one is a bear.

Victor and his followers were late arriving that summer; the grape harvest had already started. Fortunately for them, more hands were still needed, and they were an experienced work crew; so they were hired immediately. The group was different than previous years: smaller, lacking both Christof and Susannah; and somewhat wealthier, as they arrived pulling a handcart that contained the ebullient Nike and a small pavilion tent. The tent was Victor’s.  Jess and Nike, Wanda and Pietro still accompanied him.

Roberto’s operations had undergone a few transformations as well. Ginevra, as a newly married woman, was sequestered in the _casa_ and not permitted in the fields. (Married man Tony was still allowed, however, and acted as usual as a water steward.) The newer grapes were now bearing as readily as the old ones, so there were more workers; and Brother Obadiah held services in the field for them.

“What news?” asked Jess, with Nike drawing in the dust as they sat on the dry ground, and Tony having provided her with water to go with her cheese lunch. “And where’s Ginevra?”

“Uh, she has to stay indoors. She’s married.”

“Oh really? That’s great! Who to…or to whom, or…”

Tony laughed, self-conscious. “Uh, that is … to me.”

“Congratulations!” Jess stood up to give him a hug, then an elbow-dig in the ribs. “That means you know how babies come to us, right?”

“In theory.” He sat in the dust; Jess sat also. Tony continued, “We’re too young to consummate or marriage.”

“Oh. Poor Tony. Poor Ginevra.”

“Speaking of poor… why are you so late this year? And where’s Christof? And Susannah?”

“They are why we are so late. First Christof’s mother demanded him back, saying the palace could not remain any longer without its Crown Prince; and then Susannah’s family caught up with us in Paris. She had been promised to Richard the Chair-caner, and he wanted her back. We left with our cart in a hurry before we had to pay her bride-price.”

Tony filed away the information about Christof to follow the juicier story. “You _stole_ her away from her promised spouse?”

“She _wanted_ to come with us! But then she changed her mind…” Jess frowned. “We must get back to work.” She stood, dusting off her lap with her hands.

Tony stood as well. “And I guess more people want water.  I will see you later.”

Jess smiled. “Indeed, you married man. Don’t worry; you will achieve your full happiness soon enough.”

 

From Tony’s new bedroom (he refused to sleep without Ginevra near, even if he could not have her alone at night), Tony could see the vineyards and the trees under which the laborers camped. Victor’s tent was set up the first night. Sunday dawn saw the little group engaged in worship by themselves; all standing or bowing their heads as Victor gestured broadly. The rest of the camp circled Obadiah at noon-time; and he noticed the absence of the little group by the tent.

Early Sunday supper of soup and a capon, bread and wine, and cheese to follow: Roberto and Giulia with Ginevra between them and Felix below them along one side of the table; Hovarth at the head of it, spooning soup disinterestedly; Obadiah along the side next to him, where Maria should have been; then Tony, then Maria. No chance to talk to Felix, then, or to talk alone with his bride.

Obadiah sliced more chicken and put the shreds into Hovarth’s soup plate. “Have more, your Lordship; you need to eat.” Hovarth scowled at him and clutched his goblet of brandy (not wine). Obadiah turned toward Tony.

“You know the workers in the field?”

“Not as Felix does, but yes; I suppose so. Why?”

“There was a group who did not attend my sermon today. I wonder why. They _are_ Christians?”

“So they told me. They come every year to pluck grapes.”

“Then why did they not attend my sermon?”

“They hold their own services, at dawn.”

“Strange forces work at the change of the day. Perhaps I will visit their services next week.”

 

Two nights later, Tony waited as the workers returned in the early dusk. Victor had gone straight into his tent; now Tony stood outside, waiting for permission to…

“Enter!” came Victor’s voice.

“Brother Victor,” Tony greeted him. “Your flock, however diminished, is as always welcome here.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Victor replied. “Jess told you of our losses?”

“A little.”

“My brother was needed at home, and Susannah was needed in Paris.” Victor sighed. “Come, sit with me. I have wine.”

Tony took a deep pull from the leather _bota_. “I recognize this wine! Still, we would be poor vintners indeed not to share with our workers, our … roving ambassadors, as it were.”

“Indeed.” Victor took his own sip. “What brings you here tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ve been busy, but… did you notice, Sunday, most of the workers were listening to Brother Obadiah?”

“Most are not willing to share our morning fast before services.”

“Yeah, but… He noticed your group was not there.”

“Of course not!” A laugh, and another sip. “Tony, surely you know there is more than one kind of Christianity!”

“Eastern and Western?”

“Exactly.”

“But Brother Obadiah was telling me about _heresies_.”

Victor was momentarily silent. Then said, “Ah. That.”

“ _That_?”

“Perhaps his understanding of Jesus is different than mine. It could cause trouble.”

“Well, he’s planning to come to your services on Sunday.”

“That hastens my schedule. I’d hoped to have more time, but…” Victor rose to his feet, motioned Tony to do likewise. “Thank you for letting me know. Let’s talk again in a week, all right?”

“After Sunday,” Tony said flatly, dubious.

“Yes, after that. Thank you for coming, Tony. I’ll make a man of God of you yet.”


	11. Chess is a game of kings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People play games with Tony.

Sunday passed uneventfully; Obadiah grumbled at supper about how early he had had to rise, and how long his day had been, but there was no other discussion.

On Monday and Tuesday, Tony continued as water-steward and watched the workers’ interactions. Victor’s little group kept apart from the others. In previous years, Wanda and Pietro had worked near Jess, while Christof kept to himself and Susannah worked with Victor; now Jess and Nike worked their own patch, Pietro was the outlier, and Wanda worked, trembling, under Victor’s gaze. Tony mentioned this in passing to Ginevra, when they had a rare moment of talking alone, at the family dinner Tuesday night. And he told her, “Victor wants to see me.”

“Tell me what happens,” Ginevra said. “Be careful.”

“Careful? Me? You are taking your wifely duties too seriously,” Tony said. “It’s just Victor.”

 

How do you knock on the door of a tent?

Tony solved _that_ problem by calling out loud, “Victor! Here I am!” A rustle of clothing from within; to his surprise, Wanda came to the door flap, ushering him in with a hand gesture as she departed. Tony walked inside. The lamp-lit space smelled like animals rutting.

There were two camp chairs set up on either side of a small portable table, which held a chess set. Victor sat in the far chair, the light from the hanging lamp casting odd shadows on his face. “Tony! Sit. Come play. You know the rules, of course?”

“The king sits, the pawns walk, the queen has all the power?” Teasing.

Victor smiled. “The castles move ponderously, the bishops strike from a distance, and the knights…”

“Horses are flighty,” Tony agreed. “Who gets white?”

“I do,” Victor said. “For tonight, I do.”

“You put me at a disadvantage,” Tony said.

Victor harrumphed. “You’ll see.”  He made a bored first move of a pawn.

Tony moved one of his own little foot-soldiers; more pawns, a “flighty” horse and its knight taking one; Victor pulled a bishop just far enough out to protect his king. Yawned. “Let’s talk.”

“About what?” Tony was studying the board, trying to make sense of Victor’s early moves. Decided to probe with another pawn.

“The situation here. And Jesus.”

“What about Jesus?”

“Do you not see the similarities in our situation, Antonio?”

Tony winced at the name. “Well, you are a preacher, which I suppose is similar; but I’m the heir of a landowner. Who does that make me? A money-lender? An innkeeper? Lazarus?”

“I told you before. Jesus was a king, who turned His back on His kingship.”

“So?” Tony said.

Victor was holding his queen in his hand, rolling it between long fingers. “I know that Jess told you. Christof had to return to Latverie because he is crown prince. He is my brother as well. My _younger_ brother. What does that make me?”

“Does your country practice primogeniture?”

“Strictly.”

“Yet your mother is the Queen.”

“Ah. _Acting_ queen, until the true king returns.”

“Why don’t you return, then?” Tony’s travels with Hovarth had made him immune to the respect due to foreign kings (they were usually impoverished, and begging for free weaponry).

“I had my disciples, though most have fled, now; Christof was my brother, my James. I thought first that Jess was my Magdalen; then I thought Susannah was; now I see Wanda was meant to be she. I lack only one disciple before…”

“Before you go home?”

“Exactly. Before my Heavenly Father takes me home, to sit on His left side as Jesus sits on His right. To acknowledge me as God.”

“Wait a second.” Had Victor put the queen down?  Did it matter where? “Why do you think God-the-Father will take you to His side?”

“Because we are all God’s children. Because I have done everything right, just as Jesus did. It stands to reason I should receive the same reward. Only one act remains. I need your help.”

“What?” Tony was confused.

“Do you not see your role? Will you not be my Judas? Pilate lives with you, after all; Brother Obadiah would love to crucify me.”

“I think you have your analogy mangled. Pilate was Roman, not Jewish.”

“Just so. Brother Obadiah hails from Rome. He has come here to test us.”

“Anyway,” _to hell with the game_. “No, I won’t be your Judas. What would I say? ‘Hey, Brother Victor is deluded? He thinks he’s a king? He thinks he’s a god?’ Aunt Giulia would give you a strong purge, and my mother would send you away.”

“Obadiah would not allow me to leave.”

“He doesn’t have any real power here! My father does!”

“Is that what you think? Betray me and find out.”

“No, thank you.” Tony rose to leave.

“Antonio. Strong Tony. _Stark_ Tony. At least think about it.”

 

When Tony returned home, a lamp was still lit in Hovarth’s study.  As he had not seen his father visit that space in months, Tony looked in. Another set of two chairs, positioned around a chess set; Obadiah behind his father’s desk, reading some missive.

“Ah, Tony! How did your meeting with Victor go?”

“You knew?”

“Of course.” Obadiah motioned to the chess set. “Now you and I will play, and you will tell me what burdens your soul.”

_That I am denied private time with my bride_ , Tony thought; and decided not to say that.

Obadiah took the white side, as though it was his privilege. Moved a pawn, echoing Victor.

“Victor,” Tony started, trying to see whether this game was winnable. “He said that you have the power to punish sinners.”

“Of course I do. Confession is a sacrament that requires penitent acts.”

“And that you came from Rome.” Tony moved, not a pawn, but a rash knight.

“So he knows that, eh?” A white pawn moved one step closer to the knight: cheeky, but not a threat.

“He thinks you have lots of power.” A thought struck Tony. “If I told you to, would you leave?” He went back to contemplating the board.

“You are still a child, boy,” Obadiah said.

“Then if my father told you to, would you leave?”

A quick flurry of pawn play; Tony’s knight finally took that teasing pawn, and he brought another knight out.

“He won’t.” Obadiah’s bishop took Tony’s first knight.

“Then maybe Victor was right about your power.” Black knight takes white bishop. “Did you judge heretics, before you came here?”

“Among other things.” Obadiah moved his king’s-side knight out of the back row. “Is that what Victor is?”

“No, wait, I’m asking about you, not him.” Tony moved an insignificant (he hoped) pawn one step closer to the white queen. “Why does an inquisitor, from Rome, come to stay in our little village?”

Obadiah _castled_ , swapping his king and king’s rook in the back row. “Perhaps I’ve retired. Or perhaps your little village is surrounded by error, with Moors to the south, a Jewish quarter, and Toulouse to the northeast a hotbed of Cathars and free-thinkers.”

Tony moved his little pawn one step closer to Obadiah’s queen.

“You must not make the error of deciding scripture for yourself. Yet your family surrounds themselves with those who do. Is that not cause for concern?” Obadiah moved the white bishop suddenly forward to the edge of the board. “Or do Victor’s preachments conform with the Church’s teaching?”

Blast, Tony’s knight was under attack. He moved it away defensively. “He is a preacher just as you are.”

“He preaches for himself. I speak for the Church.” Paused. “Bishop takes queen, king takes bishop, queen takes king. Checkmate.” He toppled Tony’s king, and rose. “I will see you in the morning. Please pinch out the lamp when you leave.”

Tony still sat, staring at the board _. I don’t have to take your bishop. It can’t hurt my king sitting there, unless I react. You lied about the checkmate_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A/N: This was a hard chapter to write. I didn’t like Victor talking his way into his own doom (hah), even if that’s how the story goes. No guarantees the chess games work out, either.  
> Also, the Toulouse heretics would not have been called Cathars in those days. But “Gnostics” is a loaded term, and “Bogomils” a touch too exotic…]  
> [A/N to author: add chess to hashtags. Why am I always writing about chess when I don’t play it???]


	12. Souls and bodies  Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There are things worse than heretics.”

The arrests came the next day. Victor’s group—Wanda, Pietro, Jess, and Victor—were charged with heresy; but Jess was charged in addition with witchcraft.

“Why witchcraft?” Tony asked Obadiah at dinner, when next he saw him.

“There are things worse than heresy,” Obadiah said, sucking the flesh off a chicken bone. “Who sired her child, if not Satan?”

“Oh, maybe some human male,” Tony said. “There’s any number of them in the fields.”

“Yourself included, Antonio.”

“I was thirteen that year,” Tony protested.

“And naïve?”

“Aren’t I still? My wife is denied to me.”

“So much more the temptation to stray afield.”

“I wasn’t even married then!”

“Who will vouch for your virtue, then?”

Unexpectedly, Maria spoke. “I will.”

“You watched his every move?”

“I know his soul. Tony is still innocent, aren’t you?” to her son.

“Mom! Yeah…I guess so.”

“Look elsewhere,” she told Obadiah, coldly.

“So, my point stands,” the Brother replied. “Satan sired her child.”

 

Life went on; the harvest waits for no man. Brother Obadiah was absent from the farmstead except for dinners (after which he departed for the night) and for his Sunday services. Tony continued as water steward, but his days were less bright without the little group from the olive tree; the rest of the harvesters thanked him with wary deference, and insisted on calling him “My Lord.” Tony grew to hate standing on rank and privilege, remembering the camaraderie the Black Forest miners gave his father and himself, and the freedom of the road. Perhaps after the harvest he could go wandering… but no, he had a wife now and a father whose health was obviously failing. Tony felt trapped in his duties.

 

Until a night when, after dinner, Brother Obadiah asked for his company.

As they walked into town, the Brother said, “I do not think you know how we deal with heretics.”

“You kill them, right? Like outlaws.”

“Not at all! They must be cleansed of their error and given penance; but we do not harm them.”

“Then what are you doing with Victor and Pietro and Jess and Wanda?”

A loud sigh. Obadiah said, “They do not see their error. They will not recant. Perhaps the witch is controlling them.”

Tony stared at him. “You don’t believe that!”

“Who knows what a witch is capable of?”

“Why do you continue to believe she’s a witch?”

“Her child is unnatural.”

“Nike? She’s just a little girl.”

“So you would think.”

They reached the town gates, and went toward the civic building, now being used as a jail.

“So, what do you want me here for?” Tony asked.

“Here is the process with heretics. We confess them, and shrive them, and then turn them over to the civic authorities. Here is the process with witches: We attempt to drive the devil out of them. If we can’t do that, the witch must burn.”

“And you want me here, why?”

“Get them to confess their errors, Tony. Salvation is still possible, but you are their only hope.”

“Why me? Ginevra is more persuasive.”

“You would risk her soul, too?”

“You are risking _mine_?”

Brother Obadiah shrugged. “It is a calculated risk. I think you are the stronger personality, and so will prevail.”

 

So Tony went from cell to cell, while Obadiah waited out of sight, but within earshot in the hall.

Pietro first: “I’m told they’ll let you go if you recant,” Tony started.

“Recant what?” Pietro asked.

“Obadiah hasn’t told you where you are in error?”

“Just in following Victor. Who else would I follow? He is my King. I owe him my duty.” Silent tears tracked down his face.

 

Then Wanda: “If you recant…”

She turned on him. “Then what? Locked in a nunnery? Without Victor for the rest of my life? No.” Her face bore the same tears as Pietro’s.

 

“They’re going to burn you,” Tony told Victor in his cell.

“I’d hoped for crucifixion,” Victor replied calmly.

 

And finally Jess, after three failures to persuade.

Tony said, “They think you are a witch. They think someone has to be, or you all wouldn’t be so stubborn. They burn witches. Can’t you back down?”

Jess said dreamily, “What will happen to my daughter?” She gave him a hard look, and Tony realized the dreaminess was just an act.

“I’ll find out,” Tony promised, and left the cell.

 

“What happens to Nike, the little girl?” Tony asked Obadiah, in the torchlight of the courtyard outside.

“Her mother is a witch. She is the proof of witchcraft. She must burn, too.” Obadiah looked at Tony in the torchlight. “Don’t worry; children do not feel pain.” He turned to walk toward the inn in town, leaving Tony.

_Hell they don’t_ , Tony thought; and continued thinking all the way home.


	13. Souls and Bodies Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Ginevra talk.

Ginevra was already asleep when Tony made it to bed that night; and she had already arisen, with Aunt Giulia, and left him to sleep in the morning. She ambushed him in a corridor early after his breakfast, however, before he could go to the fields.

“Tony? What’s going on?”

Tony checked the corridor in both directions: no one was around. _Finally, privacy, and all this going on_? He could have wept. “It’s a hell of a mess,” he started.

“Language!”

“Oh, no, the language is right. Obadiah thinks that Victor and his group are all heretics.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Except Jess, for some reason. She must be a witch. And his order _burns_ witches. And their children too, apparently.”

“Nike? She’s too young to sin!”

“Has she been baptized?”

“I don’t know.” Ginevra was getting panicky too; Tony had to think.

“Yeah, okay, listen. If I could get Nike away—if I could rescue her—would you be willing to make sure she gets baptized in front of everyone, so there’s no mistaking it?”

“Of course.” Ginnie practically snorted.

Okay, listen, I don’t know how many of them I can save. But if it’s only Nike, are you willing to keep her? Maybe as our daughter? I know we haven’t been married long.”

“Tony, we haven’t been married _at all_.”

“ _What_??”

“I overheard our mothers talking. If for some reason the marriage isn’t consummated, it can easily be annulled. Then they can marry you off to someone else.”

“Or you.” He thought some more. “Good. If we had a daughter together, if we have Nike, then they have to keep us married, right?”

“Don’t you abandon Jess, just to get Nike! I’ll never forgive you!”

“Yeah, okay, noted…I’ll just see what I can do, okay?”

But Ginnie was thinking, too. “Wait til after dinner, okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Okay.” Tony took a deep breath. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Maybe someday we could do something about it, yeah?”

A noise behind a nearby door. “I have to go,” said Ginevra.


End file.
